What is IEC 61968‑3 about?
BS EN IEC 61968 series covers standards for application integration at electric utilities. Electric utilities are in the business of providing reliable and affordable power to all customers within their service territories and are being driven to do so in a more efficient and environmentally friendlier manner. BS EN IEC 61968‑3 define a standard for the integration of network operations systems with each other and other systems and business functions. The network operations function defined in BS EN IEC 61968‑3 provides utilities with the means to supervise main substation topology (breaker and switch state), feeder topology and control equipment status through SCADA, AMI and other data sources.
BS EN IEC 61968‑3 also provides the means for handling network connectivity and loading conditions. Finally, it makes it possible for utilities to locate customer telephone complaints and coordinate activities of field crews with respect to planned and unplanned outages.
BS EN IEC 61968‑3 specifies the information content of a set of message payloads that can be used to support many of the business functions related to network operations. Typical uses of the message payloads defined in BS EN IEC 61968‑3 include data acquisition by external systems, fault isolation, fault restoration, trouble management and coordination of the real-time state of the network.
Who is BS EN IEC 61968‑3 for?
BS EN IEC 61968‑3 on electric utilities is useful for:
- Administration department
- Telecommunication sector
- IT sector
- Software engineer
- Design engineer
Why should you use BS EN IEC 61968‑3?
The basic system model utilities have used for decades has been replaced by one utilizing a myriad of technologies that allow increased flow of data, grid control and automation to achieve the utility’s specific goals. BS EN IEC 61968‑3 illustrates the possibility of implementing functionality as either a single integrated advanced distribution management system or as a set of separate functions – OMS, DMS and SCADA.
As mentioned in BS EN IEC 61968‑3, a distribution management system consists of various distributed application components for the utility to manage electrical distribution networks. These capabilities include monitoring and control of equipment for power delivery, management processes to ensure system reliability, voltage management, demand-side management, outage management, work management, automated mapping and facilities management.
BS EN IEC 61968‑3 is intended to support applications that need to exchange data every few seconds, minutes, or hours rather than waiting for a nightly batch run and to be implemented with middleware services that exchange messages among applications, will complement, not replace utility data warehouses, database gateways, and operational stores. Using BS EN IEC 61968‑3 you can define a standard for the integration of network operations systems with each other and other systems and business functions.
What’s changed since the last update?
BS EN IEC 61968‑3:2021 supersedes BS EN IEC 61968‑3:2018. BS EN IEC 61968‑3:2021 includes some technical changes with respect to BS EN IEC 61968‑3:2018. These include:
- Major rework of Switch Order related profiles and Outage related profiles
- Documented profiles in more detail as a result of the analysis of end-to-end use cases
- Separated Measurement and Control profile into two profiles: PSR Measurements and PSR Controls
- Replaced Temporary Network Change profile with Switching Events profile
- Added Measurement Action, Control Action, Generic Action and Verification Action to Switching Plans profile. Added examples
